The Vise Grip aka Mammogram
I shall explain my post before you read any further. Women's magazines are going to be banging my door down and begging me to write for them when I'm done here. In other words Erv probably shouldn't read this.
I can't think of a better way to start blogging again than with my annual gynecological event. It isn't an appointment, it's a torturous event that women go though annually for their health and well being.
We start, and when I say we, it's exactly what you think, I talk to myself. I am my own smart and witty best friend. Several of the voices in my head have been armed, for months, with an arsenal of questions for my gynecological doctor. We will focus mainly on menopause and the hellish nightmare that it has become. I am pro medication because becoming an alcoholic seems like too much drama for me.
If I am heavily medicated then signs like the one I saw on the medical facilities front door wouldn't have the psychological effect that had me pause before entering. Wondering if everyone that had touched the door handle before me took the time to read,
"If you have been to the continent of Africa in the past 21 days and are experiencing flu like symptoms......blah, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada."
The under-medicated me stopped to weigh my options. Menopause or ebola? I guess I chose ebola because I entered. I wanted to go back home and build a blanket fort in my living room. Drink hot chocolate from a Mickey Mouse cup, stare at the swirling mini marshmallows without a care in the world and wait for my hormones to get a grip. But I was so desperate to hang on to anything that resembled my youth, I risk my life to enter a building that may have been harboring a deadly disease.
In the first waiting room I waited. I wasn't in a big hurry to wear a paper gown but I did want to get "it" over with. Once in the exam room several of my voices decided to remain silent. I don't know if they did rock, paper, scissors or what but it was important that we looked sane enough for strong medication and not insane that we would get strong medication and a straight jacket. Whatever we said worked because we got out of there with a prescription and a third stop to get blood work done.
With one stop behind me until next year we went to the pancake factory. This is where your breasts become Play-Doh and they are manipulated in such a way that your first concern is not whether they will eventually retain their original shape but instead it is will they be ripped off your body in horror movie fashion. They are stuck in a machine that squeezes down on them so tightly that you feel the skin of your neck growing taunt. A grip so tight that the jaws of life could not free you should the power go off in a freak thunderstorm during the middle of winter. And what do they tell you when you call to make an appointment for this ominous day?
"Don't wear deodorant."
What? Are they afraid we will slip out of the vise grip? The girls ain't going no where once they are smashed in that mammogram machine.
In the next waiting room I sat and contemplated life in general. No seriously, I watch some moron in the parking lot try to invent his own parking space, gave up and parked next to me. I secretly hoped he hadn't left the country in the last 21 days. My name was called yet again and this time they wanted blood.
After being violated on so many different levels I voluntarily stuck my arm out for a needle to be jabbed into it. I didn't feel it because my boobs still hurt. At that very moment you probably could have hit me over the head with a frying pan and I still would have complained about my boobs.
Hopefully I made you laugh today because that was my intention. But do not neglect your boobies. Get regular checkups because you have to. Then you can join the boob smashing conversations.
